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The Macau SAR Legislative Assembly has recently approved
the draft of a new Bill to reform the SAR's arbitration
framework by unifying and modernising the legislative regimes
for both domestic and international commercial arbitration. The
draft Bill proposes this will be done by matching the practices
and standards defined under the Model Law on International
Commercial Arbitration of the United Nations Commission on
International Trade Law.

In Macau, there are two existing parallel regimes regarding
arbitration: the domestic arbitration law (Decree-Law 29/96/M)
and the international commercial arbitration law (Decree-Law
55/98/M). The latter was inspired by the original version of
the Model Law approved in 1985, but does not yet include the
recent initiatives and standards proposed by the amendments
introduced in 2006.

The new Bill will unify those arbitration regimes and its
key aspects include the following:

the possibility to submit to arbitration
any contractual or non-contractual disputes of either civil
or commercial nature, with the exception of matters that
involve rights and interest that the parties may not dispose
of (such as certain family matters);

the arbitration tribunal will have the
authority to rule on cases in its own jurisdiction, including
on any objections with respect to the existence or validity
of an arbitration agreement, without having to resort to a
court of law;

the express admission of compatibility
with the arbitration agreement of any interim injunctions
requested and decreed by the judicial courts under general
procedural law, whether the arbitration takes place in Macau
or abroad;

the arbitration tribunal will have the
authority to grant urgent measures and preliminary orders
which are destined to preserve the efficiency of the final
award; and,

arbitral awards will not be subject to
appeal; the parties, however, will be entitled to request the
judicial court to annul an arbitration award within a period
of three months, based on limited grounds, none of which
allow for a full review of the decision based on merit.

This new legal framework ultimately aims to encourage
resorting to arbitration in Macau as an alternative dispute
resolution mechanism. It further intends to lay down the basis
for the development in Macau of a commercial arbitration hub
between China and Portuguese-speaking countries. This would
enhance Macau's commercial and trade cooperation service
platform role, the success of which depends on other (policy)
measures involving the creation of institutional arbitration
centres and attracting highly qualified human resources
personnel in the area of arbitration.